Grumpy Gardener says hello

[ragewarrior]

Hi Guys,

First of all I would be the first to admit, I havent always been organic, recycling or slightly economically or enviromentally sound. I guess you would call me a newbie to this.

However, I have a large plot of land at the back of the house, we have been wondering what to do with, so we have decided to try and grow our own fruit and vegetables. According to a friend who runs his own allotment, we get good sun at the back and the soil should be fertile enough. Apart from the top of the garden which seems to be concrete.

I have heard that when you get into this it can be quite theraputic, however, it also seems to involve spades, digging, routing, and chipping. (We have 20 foot conifers that block out the sun from the back).

So please help me out and hope you can give me words of encouragement.

Kind regards
Neil

[crowsashes]

hey there!

maybe you could start ( and it makes you feel like your achieving something ) by growing broad beans in big pots?

it would make use of the bit of concrete and get you started while you sort out the rest of your plot.

you could even have a lot of success with a few grow bags. last year i relied on grow bags and pots as my soil and garden was awful!

i had plenty of courgettes all summer, fresh peas, beans and tomatoes, even had broccoli all from a few grow bags.

and yes it is very therapeutic and extremely addictive!

[spider8]

Hi Neil and welcome. Just take things slow and gentle to start with......there's nothing like too much hard work straight-off to put a person off all this veg growing lark. Good idea Crowsashes, I'd go for that option too

[Green Aura]

Hi Neil, welcome to Ish

If you're a grumpy gardener you'll fit right in

Have a look round, there's plenty to see and ask any questions - there's usually someone around with some knowledge on a given subject.

I think you'll find that this Ish malarkey is not only therapeutic but positively addictive.

[bonniethomas06]

Hi Neil

Oooh, all that potential...

I agree with the others - start small so that you get some reward while you are working on the bigger picture. Conifers are just horrible aren't they!? It baffles me why anyone would waste space on something that a) doesn't flower or b) you can't eat

Good luck, you will find plently of encouragement and ideas here. I would start by investing in a decent gardening book - when I first started I found Dr Hessayon's 'The vegetable expert' invaluable.

Good luck!

[red]

welcome

[MuddyWitch]

Welcome to ISH

You'll soon find out just how addictive this ISHing lark is! I agree with the folks above though...take it steady, Rome wasn't built in a day and neither was any decent soil fertility!

MW

[becks77]

Hey there, welcome

[grahamhobbs]

Chop the conifers down, shred them and use them as a mulch around your soft fruit bushes. Generally try to spend more time collecting mulch materials than digging, its a win win thing to do.
Best of luck

[Millymollymandy]

There are conifers and then there are Leylandii...... I love my varied beautiful evergreen conifers and so do a lot of bird species, for food, nesting and roosting.

Hi and welcome Neil.

[ragewarrior]

Thank you for your very warm welcomes. I visited our local supermarket yesterday just to have a look at some packets of seeds, so I could see the planting times. Looks like March/April is the perfect time.

I love the idea of the pots where the concrete is.

[Modern_Pioneer]

Welcome!!! Its great to see that you have started!!

[Milims]

Hi there and welcome

[Gert]

hi

[ragewarrior]

Hi,

Im not sure if this is the right place but im still new.

Anyway, just an update. We bought a propogator and put tomato, pepper and dwarf beans. We followed the instrutions and now they are growing (guess we are doing it right). Okay the dwarf beans are around 2-3' tall and so we have had to put these into individual pots temporarily, the tomato's are shooting are around 1"-1"1/2 tall and the peppers are only just starting to show.

Okay just to point out we made sure these were container seeds. I know we need to now think about transferring these outside and need to buy planters, soil, tomato feed, slug pellets, nets/canes for the beans etc..my question is timing. When do we do this?, what sort of planters do we need to buy?,

please could anyone give us some general guidance on the next steps to growing tomato's, dwarf beans ans peppers.

await your advice.

Kind Regards
Neil